


Beside Still Waters

by MercuryGray



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Biblical References, F/M, Mutual Pining, Parallels, Slow Build, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-01
Updated: 2016-04-01
Packaged: 2018-05-30 13:33:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6425944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryGray/pseuds/MercuryGray
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emma and Hopkins both silently consider the other after a long day at work.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beside Still Waters

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ReaperWriter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReaperWriter/gifts).



> Following a prompt on tumblr from ReaperWriter (theadventuresofhistorygirl) - "Henry/Emma- a moment of quiet."
> 
> Apologies, in advance, for any mistakes regarding the layout of Mansion House. I don’t necessarily have a really good image of where things sit inside the hospital – but I have to imagine there’s someplace where a pair of people could stand and talk outside for a minute. Jasmine covered trellises and the smell of magnolias and all that.

Emma stepped out onto the porch  off of the Mansion House ballroom and took a deep breath. Summers were hot here in Virginia, and even a whole lifetime’s worth of sweating through humid summer nights when there was not even a hint of breeze had not numbed her to the discomfort she felt while working through these days.

But then, the air was too close now in the hospital anyway; her mother would have called for the screens and bid the slaves open the shutters, to let the air move where it could, but Summers given no such order, saying instead that the windows were to be left closed, to guard against the unwholesome night air, and in consequence the atmosphere inside the hospital did not move at all, settling around everyone like a blanket and stifling the men.  Emma’s skin was damp and uncomfortable  under her dress; at least outside the air seemed fresher, if it still did not move.

It had been a long day, made longer still by the sudden arrival, after dinner, of yet another group of wounded men, some of them practically at death’s door. The heat had not helped them, thirsty and bleeding, too weak to even move the flies away from where they landed as they had waited outside in the street for admittance to the hospital. (At least one man had expired from the heat alone, his jacket heavy with sweat, skin clammy and overworked.)

She took a deep breath and thought, longingly, of the kind of nights Mary had spoken of the other evening as they wiped their brows and went to dinner, cool evenings smelling of New Hampshire pines and lakeshores, a breeze blowing cool air off the water. How lovely it sounded. Emma enjoyed listening to Mary speak of New Hampshire – the snow in wintertime, the sleighing parties and sociables, mill bells and boarding houses and the improvement society meetings. When she recalled her youth it seemed to Emma that a little bit of care left the older woman’s face, and a kind of lightness came into her voice. Must be nice, having memories like that. Her own childhood seemed like a distant dream, a pleasant fiction someone had made up for her that no longer held relevance or importance. She did not like to look back at the person she had been – that girl (for she had been a girl, in so many ways – she did not feel herself a woman, yet, but she knew that much) no longer had a place in a world like this, a world where men suffered and bled and died.

A door opened and closed onto the porch a little further down, and she heard footsteps – only a few – and the sound of a body settling heavily into a chair – Someone else was seeking the respite of the night air as well.  A few pages being turned in a book. Emma walked towards the sound, her steps graceful and nearly silent on the boards of the porch. (Hadn’t she played that game enough as a child, sneaking up on her father to surprise him?)

It was Chaplain Hopkins, elbows on his knees, hunched forward with his Bible in his hands. Emma was beginning to know that pose well – the one he adopted when he was feeling particularly hopeless, bowing his body over as if somehow God might hear him better if he bent himself down in prayer. His shoulders would creep up to his ears, hunching up tight to keep the world out while he searched for consolation. He’d fallen asleep like that once, and had woken the next morning rubbing his shoulders, sore as if he’d carried the cross up Calvary himself. And how he’d shrugged it off, too!

Despite their initial differences, Emma was truly beginning to like the chaplain. His calm manner, his easy voice, his quiet strength, the way he worked without thought for himself. He carried trays for meals and sat to feed the men who could not move a spoon themselves, hefted stretchers and rolled bandages, wrote letters and read them, too  – Women’s work, Frank would have called it. She could see him scoffing now.

Emma felt suddenly indignant. Why should he scoff at comfort? Was it less noble to serve, rather than lead? If her time at the hospital had taught her anything, it was that there were many different kinds of bravery – and the bravery of the dead and of the dying, and of their keepers, was the hardest of all. And Chaplain Hopkins was brave. For what other virtue could armor a man to do what he did, day after day, watching men slip away from him and trying to comfort those they left behind, while widows wept and mothers cursed at him over the dead bodies of their kin.

A sudden thought occurred to her, watching him in his lonely chair. _While you take care of everyone else, Chaplain, who is it that takes care of you?_

She was filled, suddenly, with a desire to wrap her arm around those hunched up shoulders, and lay a kiss on that furrowed brow, to let him know that it was not to God alone that he could turn for comfort. _You should not need to hide and be lonely in your grief._ Not that he would have her – she knew he thought her silly and frivolous, a girl in need of minding. And he hardly needed someone else to worry for.

She could hear his voice now, soft and urgent, his lips moving while his eyes remained closed.

“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.  He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.” She could feel her own lips forming the rest of the verse, unthinking, as she prayed silently with him, “He restoreth my soul; he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.”

* * *

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.  Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.”

Henry closed the bible and sat for a moment, letting the words wash over his heart. Yes, this was the valley of the shadow of death, and he had need of green pastures and still waters. He’d been sitting with one of the boys who’d come in this afternoon – a gut wound that none of the surgeons would touch. A perferation of the bowel, they said– merely a matter of time before he died. (Boys – the man had been fully thirty, but he had seemed a boy to Henry. They all seemed like boys when they were in pain.)

There was a creak on the porch, and he turned towards the sound, the dim evening throwing out a woman’s figure whose face became a little clearer in the dark – “Nurse Green.” He sat up, setting the bible aside and wiping his hands on his thighs. Confound this heat – was there no end to it?

She smiled. “I didn’t mean to disturb you,” she offered, shyly.

He shook his head. “No disturbance – I was…trying to escape the heat inside.”Or just trying to escape, he almost wanted to say.

She smiled at that. “I wish I could say it was nicer out here.” She turned her gaze over the side of the porch, considering the city around them in the evening twilight. “Still, I like the quiet.”

Henry had to smile at that. It would have seemed a silly thing for anyone else to say, but from her, it was…a revelation. Let her have all the quiet she desired – for it meant, to him, that she was done with riotous youth. Since her arrival at the hospital as a blushing debutante wearing a fine gown and intent on doing nothing more than soothing troubled brows and speaking in dulcet, earnest tones of heroism and valor and honor to men who wanted nothing more than water and the solace of their mothers, she had grown in ways that he did not think even she herself could have imagined. She was a nurse now, fully capable and deserving of the title. And he found himself…watching her.

Not in _that_ way – god in heaven, he hoped not that. She was no Susanna, and he prayed he was not yet like the lecherous elders who had trapped her. At first, it had been brotherly concern that motivated him, a desire to make sure that she, young as she was, came to no harm from the men she served. She was naive, and did not think badly of anyone, save perhaps the Union officers she professed to hate, and he did not want to see any hurt come to her. But then, one day, he had seen her on the wards, and realized, suddenly, that there was a way the light had of catching at her hair, when she was sitting at a bedside, some tint of angelic beauty that came and sat around her brows like a crown, following her in everything she did. And brotherly love no longer seemed sufficient for what he felt.

She was unstoppable, some days, pulling up hidden reserves of energy and motion when all others seemed spent, intent, it seemed, on making up for lost time and misspent youth. Like today – it was long past the time she would have been at home and she was still here. She had been helping in surgery, he thought – her apron was red with blood. A thankless task even on the best days – and in this heat! She must have been exhausted.

_As you take care of everyone else, Emma Green, have you not stopped to ask who will take care of you?_

_Because some days I wish it could be me._

He worried for her – God in heaven, did he worry.  She worked to her limits and beyond, hardly pausing some days to eat or take a cup of water. And she’d fainted, once, too, early in the season when they were still acquainting themselves with the sultry arms of summer, dropped to the ground like a stone. He had been glad Nurse Phinney was in the room and went to her before he could; it would have been indecent, for him to pick her up as he had wished to, cradle her head in his lap and watch her eyes flutter open as they did for Mary, smiling feebly and apologizing. He’d felt it in his bones, the urge to move and pick her up, and kiss her in consolation.

Yes, he was ashamed to say he had given a great deal of thought to kissing Emma Green. _Let me kiss you with the kisses of my mouth: for thy love is better than wine._ He could easily get drunk on the thought of her kisses alone – the actual act would doubtless put him in a stupor.

It hardly mattered – such a thing was impossible. He knew she had a young man, somewhere. And besides, she could hardly be disposed to like a humble preacher – she, a lady of fine breeding and gilded youth. She would go back to that, doubtless, when the war ended, back to her fine gowns and elegant parties in her father’s hotel. And he would go back to his small town in Pennsylvania and the little church waiting for him there, with its white walls and verdant lawn.

Still, to watch her in the evening twilight, and meditate upon her smiles and her thoughts – that was a pasture green enough for him some days.

_Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest, where thou makest thy flock to rest at noon: for why should I be as one that turneth aside by the flocks of thy companions?_

**Author's Note:**

> The Psalm in the middle of the piece is the 23rd; the passage Henry quotes (or misquotes, rather) is the Song of Solomon, Chapter 1, verses one and seven.
> 
> I couldn’t decide when I started whose voice I wanted to focus on more, and I liked the idea of both so much I decided this little ‘mirror’ would be a fun thing to do. Hope you enjoy it!


End file.
